Magazines in a bind

By David Dale

25 August 2013 — 3:00am

More than half the shelf space at my local newsagency is taken up with magazines. When I counted last week, 446 titles were on display, from Allure to ZOO Weekly, via Backyard Poultry, Capture, FlyLife, GQ, MiNDFOOD, New Ceramics, Oxygen, Penthouse, Rolling Stone, Twisted, Unique Cars and Women's Fitness. The shopkeeper tells me he's lucky if he sells more than 20 different titles in a week.

He dusts them regularly and dutifully returns them to their distributors at the end of their cycle, replacing them with the latest editions. He likes to think that one day some eccentric will buy an example of every one of them, and he'll be able to send some money to all the publishers - assuming they're still in business.

Covered: Magazines fill news-stands, but many are returned unsold.Credit:Per Groth

Newsagents are at the cutting edge of the death of print. During the past three years, total newspaper sales have fallen by 20 per cent, while magazine sales have declined by 13 per cent.

Mags may be dying more slowly than rags, but they don't have the consolation of believing their readers are moving online. People who get their news from a website don't miss the days when they got their fingers blackened, but the aesthetic pleasure of turning the pages of a gourmet glossy or a fashion bible can't be replicated by clicking on a screen. When the circulation of a Vogue or a Vanity Fair falls, most of those readers are lost forever.

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Frankie magazine.

Looking at the latest data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, an optimist would note that 6.6 million Australians are still buying a daily or weekly paper, and 6.8 million are still buying a weekly, monthly, bimonthly or quarterly magazine.

A pessimist would note that in the past three years, 1.6 million people have stopped buying print papers, and 1.1 million have stopped buying magazines. But the pessimist would have to concede there are still some inspiring case studies in the magazine world. Every newspaper took a circulation hit in the latest data, but among the audited magazines, 22 enjoyed a circulation boost.

The strangest success story is a bimonthly called Frankie (pictured above), which hasn't stopped soaring since its launch in 2004. Despite its $9.95 cover price, the look is downright daggy, defying all the principles that once ruled an editor's life: no sex, no scandal, no celebrities, no expensive fashions, no glistening mounds of food, no screaming headlines, and not a word about the royal family.

It's lifestyle, but not as we know it. It's not even glossy. But there's no denying that turning the heavy pages and gazing at the quaint illustrations is satisfying. It seems to be aimed at female hipsters under the age of 30. I asked a member of my family, who approximately fits that demographic, to explain the appeal.

''It's for people who were raised privileged but want to be alternative,'' she said. ''It tells you how to be like a really cool, awesome person.''

The cover of the September issue is a collection of childlike paintings of flowers in pots. That modest image stands out defiantly on a news-stand swarming with models and movie stars.

Inside you'll find essays on edible weeds (''They're steeped in nutrients and healing properties''); the joy of being a lady weightlifter; 10 obscure words that should be used whenever possible (such as ''babery and groak''); how to stay pals with an ex; how to preserve flowers (''find a large heavy book like a dictionary, encyclopedia or your old Harry Potter novels …''); the recovery of Rwanda; what it's like on a psych ward; and ''an op-shopped chopping board becomes a woolly objet d'art via our cute DIY loom''.

One description unites Frankie with the other mags whose sales have risen during the past three years (see box above): old-fashioned. It looks like an artefact recovered from a 19th-century London townhouse, produced before the invention of the internet, of television, even of radio - a relic from an age when print was the only platform.

And that is the future of magazines.

Glossy losses and gains

Australia's top-selling magazines are:Women's Weekly, down from 493,000 monthly three years ago to 459,000 now; Better Homes and Gardens, from 383,000 monthly to 362,000; Woman's Day, from 400,000 weekly to 345,000; New Idea, from 326,000 weekly to 290,000.

The fast fallersReader's Digest, down from 286,000 three years ago to 200,000 now; ZOO Weekly, down from 100,500 to 47,000; Cosmopolitan, down from 151,000 to 98,000; Australian Geographic, down from 126,000 to 79,000; TV Week, down from 198,000 to 158,000.

The rapid risersBelle, up from 35,000 three years ago to 55,000 now; Frankie, up from 47,000 to 65,000; Real Living, up from 62,000 in 2010 to 80,000; Home Beautiful, up from 74,000 to 84,000; Country Style, up from 57,000 to 65,000.